Patreon change their charging structure

• Patreon makes a number of changes to their service fees - shifting much of those fees to your patrons. Patrons will now pay 2.9% plus US$0.35 (they were paying nothing), while creators will now only pay 5%. Here’s a few examples based on $10. A search on Twitter for patreon appears to indicate that creators aren’t happy.

  
  Jul 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • Worth adding that most patrons outside the US are, in effect, paying 6% in exchange and card fees, since Patreon only accept US dollars, and none of the 179 other currencies in-use in the world.

• A new service providing “hassle-free music licensing for podcasts”, has been launched by music platform SourceAudio. Subscriptions start at US$10 a month.

• Panoply launches Battle Scars, a war stories podcast featuring veterans.

• Another article laying into Apple’s Podcasts app: this time, the influential Slate magazine. “As for the Apple Podcasts app, I literally deleted it.”

• Blubrry launches a product called Podcast Mirror. It acts as a nicer (and more robust, the claim goes) RSS feed. It’s free, and lives over here. Here’s what a hosted podcast feed looks like on their service: the system offers listeners the “subscribe by email” service from Blubrry, as well as a subscribe-on-Android service also run by the company. The audio URL is not interfered-with.

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• Cast Away, the Australian Podcast Awards, releases their 2018 categories in an email. Submission starts on Feb 1st 2018. You can get on the mailing list here.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Jul 28 2023

• Data from iHeart, the US radio company. They claim 100m registered US users to their app, and “10,000 shows, 525 of which are made in-house”. Podcasting has grown 60% since January. “We’re able to sell specific [sponsorships for] bigger shows, because that creates a better revenue opportunity. Local stations monetize [smaller shows with] the people already buying their station and morning show.”

• An antidote to the smart-speaker frenzy, The Week publishes a story called The looming end of the smart speaker. It links to this research, with some data on how US users used smart speakers in Q1 2017.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Jul 28 2023

• The Discover Pods Awards announce their finalists. Over 4,000 submissions to these awards; voting is on now.

• Matt Deegan from Fun Kids, a children’s radio station and podcaster in the UK, posts YouTube’s Rewind for 2017, and a stark note for people making media for under 30s.

I’m grateful to Triton Digital, who join us as a new silver subscriber through Patreon.